The LA Times has an interesting piece about how Southern Democrat state lawmakers are turning Republican:

Since the midterm election, 24 state senators and representatives have made the switch in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

In some cases, the ramifications have been profound: In Louisiana, defecting Democrats gave Republicans a majority in the state House for the first time since Reconstruction; in Alabama, they delivered the GOP a House supermajority. Republicans have 65 votes to the Democrats’ 39, enough to pass constitutional amendments over Democratic opposition.

The trend continued through late January — when nine officials in Lamar County in northeastern Texas left the Democratic Party — and into last week, when Louisiana Atty. Gen. James D. “Buddy” Caldwell switched parties, leaving the GOP in control of every major state office in Baton Rouge. …

Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta, said the party-switching — in addition to big Republican legislative gains in the South in the November election — reflect an ongoing “top-down realignment” of the region’s white voters from old-school conservative Democrat to Republican.

Read the rest here. It certainly suggests that there won’t necessarily be a new crop of Blue Dog Democrats coming along in a few years to replace those who were ousted by Republicans in the 2010 cycle.